In its first meeting of the year, the Orange County Schools Board of Education discussed results from a survey that aimed to better understand issues facing parents and students.
The Panorama Family-School Relationship Survey was administered to Orange County Schools last fall, and educators plan to use the results to improve the school system.
Lee Williams, Orange County School’s Chief Equity Officer, said the survey is a tool which allows schools to work towards fixing inequities.
“The whole idea with these surveys are: how is the perception and how are we engaging in schools? So especially thinking about our family panorama survey, it’s thinking about how our families feel comfortable going into schools, how is their engagement with schools and are they aware of all the things that we have. That’s not something we can see in PowerSchool, or educator’s handbooks,” said Williams.
The survey covered nine areas, including academic needs, engagement and school safety.
Orange County Schools Chief Communications Officer Kevin Smith said there was an approximately 50 percent completion rate of the survey. However, Smith added 93 percent of respondent’s home language was English compared to only 4 percent of Spanish speakers.
“This was the first really difficult pill to swallow,” said Smith. “That’s not a representative sample of our district.”
Smith said one survey question asked parents if they know what mental health and wellness resources or counseling services are available at their child’s school. 59 percent of parents said “yes,” while 41 percent of parents said “no.”
“You all can think about some of the ramifications of that,” said Smith.
The “barriers to engagement” category was the largest section in the survey with 13 questions, Smith said. He noted child care needs, transportation challenges and concerns about getting to school safely were less of an issue for most survey respondents.
However, a busy schedule was found to be a barrier for many parents being involved in their child’s education. This includes talking with teachers and becoming more involved with the school community.
“Five percent of families meet in-person with teachers monthly or more at the school,” said Smith. “Maybe that’s the right number, but it just seems like a very small number. The higher the education, the higher the income, the higher the attainment, the more white — the more of those that identify you, the busier your schedule is and the less you’re engaging with school because of your busy schedule.”
Smith noted, though, parents said they were directly involved with their children outside of school.
“How often do you talk with your child about what their class is learning? 83 percent said pretty often,” said Smith. “To what extent do you know how your child is doing socially — the social-emotional well-being of your child? 61 percent.”
Orange County students also completed a panoramic survey in the fall, which approximately half of students responded to. Students had to get permission from their parents to take the survey.
Jessica Dreher, the Director of Student Engagement and Support Services for Orange County Schools, highlighted issues for students the survey illustrated.
“Areas of concern — how often are you able to pull yourself out of a bad mood? Only 46 percent of our students answered favorably,” said Dreher. “When everybody around you gets angry, how relaxed can you stay? 43 percent responded favorably. During the past 30 days, how clearly were you able to describe your feelings? Only 49 percent of our elementary students answered favorably.”
Students currently have the option to take Orange County’s mid-year survey, which opened on January 16 and will end on February 10th, Dreher said.
“We will begin to get some comparison information so we will be able to find some trends,” said Dreher. “We want to continue to work with schools to desegregate data to work with their school improvement plans and to assess needs for our students.”
Smith said ultimately, the survey allowed the Board of Education to establish baseline data which schools will use in the upcoming months to align with their school improvement processes.
Monique Felder, the superintendent of Orange County Schools, agreed the data was helpful for planning purposes.
“That allows us to look at the whole child… trying to pinpoint what is going on with the child and not just focusing on one area,” Felder said. “We have a number of data points we can look at to provide information.”
Photo via Matherly Collins/The Daily Tar Heel.
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